RVCP CLASSES

In our school, our students:

• Practice the skills they need to be themselves most effectively.

• Are themselves as they are today. We accept them without condition. All feelings are OK. Remember that it is OK for the children to make mistakes and act from their own experience. We can help them learn other ways of expression; mistakes are accepted as a part of learning.

• Observe, investigate, refuse and try. Children can participate in a way that feels good for them. Different things work for different people and they can participate at the level at which they are ready. Participation also involves active listening. This may look like the children are interrupting at times – Remember that this is their school and that they have a voice and a role in creating it.

• Be joyful and disappointed. Children will be met where they are emotionally; the different temperaments that they bring to the group will be respected.

• Practice keeping bodies, feelings and property safe and don’t have to share, be happy, sorry or well mannered. We give children other ways of modeling safe, healthy, behavior. We allow them to engage in empathy-building by pointing out how their actions effect others, which allows for learning to take place without shame. Children will not be refused something due to an absent ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ and will not be forced to apologize.